In this study, we make the case for using texts children create as part of their play as a means for assessing their developing print literacy knowledge. We assessed 4- and 5-year-old children's authentic texts using categories and criteria from the "Assessing Young Children's Marks/Drawing/Print" tool, a research-based, classroom…

Research has consistently established the positive impact of sharing books with young children. Evidence suggests several important factors when evaluating book sharing with young children, including the quality of educator practice = and the nature of groupings, as well as the frequency and duration of book sharing sessions and access to books.…

This study explored how early childhood intervention (ECI) professionals could support the development of secure attachment in children with developmental delay or disability (DD) within the context of ECI in Australia. Secure parent--child attachment is conducive to the aims of ECI to enhance the development, well-being, and participation of…

Play is a place of diverse meaning-making for young children and often central to family life. This paper reports on a family study in which the authors analyse Author One's family photos of young children's play across four generations. The photo analysis shows continuity and transformations in the types of play activities the young children…

Critical pedagogy has the potential to create transformation experiences within early childhood settings, as educators open up children's worlds to explore fairness, equity, and democratic participation across issues of interest and relevance to young children. Using a critical inquiry framework, informed by the work of Paulo Freire, teachers from…

Young children's spatial reasoning is critical to mathematics learning from an early age. Recent reviews have drawn attention to the importance of mathematical experiences in the early years; however, an explicit focus on research in spatial reasoning can contribute to a more coherent account of the field. This paper reports a scoping review of…

The problem to be addressed by this study is to discover the effectiveness of early art education exposure in reaching student academic and social achievement through the eyes of early childhood educators. The concept of art integration has experienced many theoretical changes in relation to educating children in early education. It has been…

Entry of children to primary schools in India marks a sudden shift in the pedagogical approach as play-based pedagogy gives way to formal instruction. This paper argues that children's play motives do not subside when they enter school, rather play takes a more mature form and represents a strong linkage between their thought and reality. The…

It is well established that parenting influences child behavior at home, but less is known about the associations between parenting and teacher reports of child behavior at school, an environment more distal from the home context. This study investigated the presence of authoritarian, authoritative, permissive, and uninvolved parenting styles (PS)…

"Communities of practice" is a concept employed by Etienne and Beverly Wenger-Trayner (2015) to refer to "groups of people who share a… passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly" (p. 1). In the museum context, a community-of-practice model provides educators the opportunity to…

This paper draws on the social ecology of Félix Guattari, to suggest that young children learn in complex social and natural situations, in this case 'getting muddy'. The notion of social ecology will be revived in this paper, to ensure that the human social world is embedded in and part of the natural world, with all its complexities, relations…

Children's citizenship in early childhood education and care is the root of democracy, equity, and sustainability. In Aotearoa New Zealand, "Te Whariki" has a strong aspiration for children as competent and active citizens. Early childhood settings are sites where children may have opportunities to act as powerful citizens. Employing…

The study's purpose was to examine the contribution of a programmable robot to an intervention program for promoting spatial ability (spatial relations, visual-memory, mental rotation) of preschool children. Eighty-four participants were randomly assigned to three intervention groups: programmable-robot-based intervention, traditional…

In this study, we aimed to understand what readiness meant to educators in two districts that were in the midst of developing pre-K-3 initiatives. We examined how readiness was conceptualized by teachers, school leaders, and district leaders as well as what factors influenced their understandings. We found that educators in our study tended to…

This article presents an intervention proposal that seeks to develop computational thinking in Early Childhood Education, using an educational ground robot with programmed directionality controls. Within the observational methodology, it has been possible to characterize computational thinking in children of Early Childhood Education -- 5 years…